I think most shooters have a rather bland storyline leaving a gamer who hungers depth empty handed, Halo has a storyline as well, but somehow I get the feeling it was all chucked together as they carried on with sequels, Halo 1 for example explained little or nothing, Halo 2 only explained a bit more due to the fact the books etc helped it tell the story, but only the Halo nerds actually sat, read and enjoyed it, I thought the books were badly written, and didn't much enjoy them at all, but then I'm a writer, I also want to be a movie producer, so I can tell the difference between something with a superb plot and something that is just there for the sake of it, and something that is just "crap".
FF7 was a good game, both gameplay, graphics and plot wise, and so was 8, although there were parts of 8 that left me rather baffled until I later understood them. After 8 only the most rabid of FF fanboys didn't realise that the plots were bcoming rather cliche and the games lacking spice, 9 was like the talk of the town, but yet it wasn't really all that exciting to play, and 10 was just plain embarrasing, thats where I stopped playing FF games, I have yet to try 12, I haven't bought any of the spinoffs cos I can't see thier purpose, the only reason I want the PSP version is well, because its on PSP, and Advent children was pretty good, however, I think Square realises that 7 put them where they are today, so they try to overkill it with needless sequels and spinoffs.
I have played quite a few games recently, even new gen ones, and when it comes to storyline wise, they usually fail miserably, not that raters, analysts, buyers or devs care that much, at the end of the day, the more Aliens, blood, graphics, fancy features, cgi clips, cool characters in outfits that say cool things and all the rest of that nonsense the game has, the better, and when you have millions of fans like Halo or GOW or FF or Mario has, why waste time thinking of storylines?